Leica Super-Elmar-M 18mm f/3.8 ASPH 11 649 and 77mm filter ring 14 484(10.9oz/310g). enlarge. I'd get it at Adorama; you also can get it at Amazon. It helps me keep adding to this site when you use these links to get your goodies. Thanks! Ken.

This 18mm is a welcome addition after over 50 years of waiting. (Leica offers a 16-21mm f/4 zoom, but it's a zoom, not a fixed lens, and it's not agile with filters.)

Leica chose the right date in history to announce its first 18mm lens ever. Not only is it announced on the 18th, it's announced in February 2009. 2 x 9 = 18, as does February (2) x 09. You've got to credit the Germans for being thorough; in fact, there is a word for German thoroughness: „Deutsche Gruendlichkeit.“

Don't stay up late getting excited about f/3.8 being faster than f/4; it's less than one-sixth of a stop faster.

This 18mm takes 77mm filters for use with film, but only if you buy a special filter holder. For use with digital or color print film where you don't usually need filters, you'll do fine wiht the included dedicated hood and no filter holder.

Leica also introduced a new fixed 18mm finder to go with the new 18mm lens.

Compatibility

This new 18mm lens works flawlessly with every Leica M camera ever made, from the M3 of 1954 through today's Leica M7. Flawlessly means flawlessly: unlike Nikon, absolutely everything works as well as with any other Leica M lens or body made since 1954.

(The old half-frameM8 and M8.2 threw away half the image, so on the M8, this 18mm lens only gives an angle-of-view similar to what a 24mm lens sees on every other full-frame Leica.)

It works the same on the M3 as most newer cameras. You need to use the external finder with every Leica, so using an M3 from 1954 simply means you need to meter externally instead of through the lens.

The Leica 18mm has no filter thread. There is only an external male thread onto which you screw either the included hood or the optional 77mm filter holder 14 484. You screw the filter holder onto the lens instead of the hood.

The filter holder employs the same „Deutsche Gruendlichkeit“ that Leica used in crafting the announce date. It is stiffeer to screw on than a filter, so once attached, it's as if the lens was built with a 77mm thread. THe filter holder locks in the right position so that the cut-outs are on top as they belong so that finders are blocked as little as possible.

(For the old M8, there was a special UV/ IR Filter 13 422 that fits between the lens and the lens hood.)

Leica's 18mm finder is quality incarnate. What would you expect from Leica?

Open the box, and out slides a custom dark foam holder, in which sits a genuine leather case. The case smells like the fine leather it is, and it is lined in fine velour.

Pop open the leather case, and inside sits your new finder in its own plastic bag.

Take out the finder, and its made like they used to be — but better because it's multicoated. It's all metal, with engraved engravings.

The 18mm finder is shorter than a classic Leica 21mm finder. Both the 18mm and 21mm finders show about the same sized image as you view through the finder, with the 18mm finder showing a larger picture angle at a correspondingly lower magnification.

The view is worse than the classic 21mm finders because it's littered with inner framelines for a 24mm lens, and the rectangles don't go all the way around. You get four big corners instead of a complete rectangular frame.

The view through the Leica 18mm finder is a rectangle in the middle of black, with the mirrored 18mm frame lines outlining the visible image. There isn't image beyond the mirrored framelines, but oddly, unlike the 21mm finders, there is lighter gray rectangle in which the active image sits.

All in all, it's a nice image, but the Zeiss 18mm finder is bigger, clearer and has less distractions.

Your choice will be clear: the Leica Man will accept nothing less than the Leica 18mm finder, while the practical photographer will opt for the bigger, clearer image of the Zeiss. The Zeiss shows a bigger image, and also suggests you'll get slightly less in your frame than the Leica 18mm finder (the Zeiss finder give more wiggle room for framing error while the Leica tries to show more of what should be in your frame). The Zeiss 18mm finder is also half the price, and made just as well sans leather case.

The Leica 18mm finder has a similar optical design to the 21mm finders, and has similar distortion: the middle bulges out, but the sides are straight again.

The Leica 18mm finder comes in chrome or black, both with rubber-bumpered eyepieces.

My only qualms are that it has half-frame graffiti (for half-frame shooters) littering the view for full-frame shooters. There are marks in the active image area to denote what little part of the image gets captured on an M8 or M8.2, but that junk disturbs the true (full-frame) Leica photographer.

If you settle for half-frame (M8 and M8.2), I'd give a serious look to Leica's 21-24-28mm Zoom Finder instead, which has a much bigger image than this fixed 18mm finder. If you're shooting half-frame, you don't get the 18mm field of view, you only get 24mm, and thus you'll want to leave the zoom finder set to 24mm for use with the 18mm lens on an M8.

For the true Leica photographer (full-frame), I find the dedicated Zeiss 18mm finder superior because it doesn't have half-frame scribbles in your view.

The Leica Man accepts nothing but the best. The Leicaman uses the Leica Universal Wide Finder, which has dedicated settings for 18mm (and 24mm, but Leica Men don't settle for half-frame), as well as an illuminated bubble level and discrete distance settings.

It appears to have the trademark single-fingertip focus lever, and the aperture ring looks like it's perfectly positioned also to make it trivial to adjust with one fingertip.

We'll see. If Leica got the filter adapter right, we could have a real winner on our hands.

Sharpness

Critical analysis of Leica's Technical Data, tells us that this is going to be an exceedingly sharp lens, even wide-open. Wide-open isn't that big a deal, since f/3.8 (really f/4) is where you'll be shooting most of the time in anything but broad daylight.

The sharpness specifications (MTF curves) are quite amazing. This lens doesn't get any sharper stopped down, so to get the best results, be sure to follow my Optimum Aperture Suggestions to avoid the effects of diffraction.

To use real filters on film, like grads, warming filters and colored filters for shooting B&W film, you need the 14 484 77mm Filter Adapter as I've shown in most of my photos.

When you do this, it's tight. A standard filter with a 5mm-thick mounting ring (excluding rear threads) is the fattest thing what won't vignette.

A filter in a rotating mount 7mm or thicker, like a screw-in grad, will start to vignette slightly. With a filter this thick, you may see a slight vignette on raw film, but mounted slides won't have a problem.

Forget stacking two filters. Sorry.

Ghosts and Flare

I have no idea until I get one in my hands. These and other aspects are never covered in the specifications.

Use on Half-Frame (M8, M8.2) Cameras

It's silly to waste most of this lens by throwing away the best part of the image, the sides and corners, which is the whole point of an ultra-wide angle lens.

I shoot full-frame RealRaw digital for the best quality, and especially to get the wide angle for which I paid.

All you have to do to get full-frame digital images from this 18 is to have your lab scan everything as it's processed. I get files equivalent to full-frame 25MP sensors for a mere $11.95 per roll from NCPS, who does mail order from anyplace on Earth.

If you need a full-frame Leica M, any Leica M ever made, even the oldest M3 or very inexpensive finderless M1, MD or MDa work perfectly, since you need to use an external finder anyway. It's trivial to guess at the focus distance for ultrawide lenses if you cheap-out with a finderless camera, otherwise, the rangefinder couples even on the 1954 M3.

If you really want to deal with the expense and hassle of an M8 and the battery chargers and computers and losing most of your image, you'll also want to screw with the dedicated 13 422 UV/IR filter to make up for the inadequate internal filtering of the M8/8.2 to get your blacks ad colors to look right.

Since you'll only get the middle (24mm equivalent) section of the 18mm image on an M8, you don't need an 18mm finder. All you need is a 24mm finder, and for that, I'd suggest Leica's 21-24-28mm Zoom Finder, since it has the biggest, brightest image.

I suspect that any of these lenses is long enough and fat enough that actual shooting may be a pain, because the lens will appear in the bottom of the finder image. It's a real problem with smaller, less wide 21mm lenses.

2.) Filters. If you're actually going to shoot this lens, and not just keep it locked in your collectors' glass case, you need to get filters on and off it fast, and need to get at least two filters on at the same time without vignetting.

The fact that I have to buy a special filter holder scares me.

On Leica's 21mm lens, I can use normal 55mm filters, and if I need to stack two, I can step it up to larger sizes. The 21mm hood drops right on top of any 55mm filter, protecting both it and the lens.

If filter use isn't fluid, then the 21mm will stay and the 18mm can go. If filters are a pain with this lens, the Zeiss 18mm would be a far better lens for actual photography.

If Leica designed the filter holder correctly, it could be a masterpiece. Unlike some overweight lenses introduced recently like the 50mm f/0.95, this 18mm is small enough and light enough to resonate with the spirit of the true Leica photographer.

For collectors as well as shooters, this 18mm lens is a milestone. It's the first time in over 50 years that Leica has expanded the range of the Leica M system.

Since size and weight are about the same as the perfectly reasonable 21mm f/2.8 ASPH, if the distortion is low enough and the finder blockage and filter issues are reasonable, I want one of these 18mm lenses pronto. I live for ultrawide angles, and if this lens is a winner, it will save me from disrespecting a Leica with a third-party Zeiss 18mm.

The brochure and publicity photos are funny: they only show this glorious 18mm f/3.8 sitting on the M8 half-frame camera, on which 18mm is not an ultra-wide angle at all. The angles-of-view are quoted for (and all the example photos were shot on) a Leica MP full-frame film camera, not the runt-sensored M8. Hee hee! Marketing people should never try to hoodwink their potential customers.

The biggest help is to use these links to Adorama, Amazon, B&H, Calumet, Ritz and J&R when you get your goodies. It costs you nothing and is a huge help. These places have the best prices and service, which is why I've used them since before this website existed. I recommend them all personally.